Ken Writes About Stuff: Vol. 1

Ken Writes About Stuff Vol. 1

KWAS Vol. 1 is a collection of 13 supplements written by master Lovecraftian writer and GUMSHOE guru Kenneth Hite. Discover hideous creatures, uncover an occult Nazi bell or join the men in black with this baker’s dozen of fear and fun!

In the ENnie-award winning Ken Writes About Stuff series, Kenneth Hite turns his considerable writing talents and encyclopedic knowledge of game design, history, the occult and all things Mythos to bear on new topics. From hideous creatures to GUMSHOE innovations, from Moon Dust Men to martial arts, Ken illuminates the dark corners of the genre with 4000-word supplements.

Each PDF includes a deep delve into some deeply weird topic, plus crunchy bits for your GUMSHOE game. If you’re a fan of Suppressed Transmissions,Trail of Cthulhu, Night’s Black Agents, The Nazi Occult or Day After Ragnarok, KWAS is a must-have.

Die Glocke, about a mysterious bell-shaped device built deep in a Silesian mine shaft by the SS.

Hideous Creatures: Mi-Go, about the fungi from Yuggoth, the half-crustacean haunters of the hillside, the malevolent alien miners … are also opponents of the Yellow Sign and tireless questers for science.

Moon Dust Men - employees of the program President Eisenhower established in 1953 to locate, contain, and coordinate everything known about the alien presence on Earth.

Hideous Creatures: Ghouls - charnel predators, or changeling denizens of Dream, follow their tunnels from the sands of Arabia to the catacombs of Paris - or just stay in Boston for some fine New England cuisine!

Looking Glass: Mumbai - We look at India’s mightiest metropolis, from its legendary crime syndicates to its glamorous movie colony — and we look beneath it, for vampires and conspiracies and Mythos maneuverings.

Hideous Creatures: Shoggoth. Infinitely plastic and ductile — slaves of suggestion, builders of cities — more and more sullen … intelligent … amphibious … and imitative!” If something can take any shape, what is its true nature? Are the shoggoths slave machines or biotech Singularity? Are they one or many? Tekeli-li!

GUMSHOE Zoom: Mind Control. This is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful GUMSHOE Zoom I’ve ever known in my life. Presenting detailed rules for brainwashing, memetics, telecontrol, and brain hacking, and for gear from the Microwave Auditory Effect gun to subliminal flashers to tinfoil hats, it brings the fight inside your head.

Hideous Creatures: Star Vampires. “The human blood on which it had fed revealed the hitherto invisible outlines of the feaster.” Invisible outlines that shall be expanded upon, extended even, into all sorts of dimensions. Are they summoned demons or feral predators? Are they kindred or competitors to Colin Wilson’s Space Vampires? Herein we trace the Shambler From the Stars, with bonus Night’s Black Agents statistics and a scenario seed.

Lilith. “Satan here held his Babylonish court, and in the blood of stainless childhood the leprous limbs of phosphorescent Lilith were laved.” Lilith as Queen of the Vampires, Lady of the Night — or as First Rebel and First Heroine? We look at the many faces of Lilith, as a Trail of Cthulhu titan (Elder Goddess or Great Old One), Night’s Black Agents vampire queen, Mutant City Blues super-Typhoid Mary, and at her role in the center of the First Esoterror Operation.

There is also a bonus edition, available only with this collection: Foul Congeries. This issue opens the books on Lovecraftian monsters that have never taken stat-block form before in any game, including the Ultraviolet Devourer, Vampirish Vapour and Worm-Cultist.

All reported problems are fixed and all entries have epub, mobi and pdf versions available for download.

Pelgrane PMay 20, 2014 5:20 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

Sorry that some people have had problems downloading the files. I’ve deleted the old files from the subscription and re-added them all, so your DTRPG library should have the updated ZIP files with the bookmarked PDF, EPUB and MOBI in it for these products now.

Please contact us directly at support@dyingearth.com if you continue to have issues with the downloads.

L. Lee DMay 07, 2014 3:18 am UTC

PURCHASER

how do you access the epub files. Also as and aside, except for foul congeries, I never received a subscription notice for any of the other products and had to go looking for them when they came out to download them. I don't know if this was glitch in my subscription or what

Pelgrane PMay 15, 2014 12:58 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

If you aren't getting emails about products to which you've subscribed, then contact technical support.

Norbert BMay 04, 2014 8:42 pm UTC

PURCHASER

I'm looking for my copy of Foul Congeries also.

Pelgrane PMay 15, 2014 12:59 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

It's available from your download page. We sent out an email with a resubscription offer, but if you opted out of getting emails, you won't have had it.

May 15, 2014 10:57 pm UTC

PURCHASER

In my case it's definitely not on my download page. I did get the e-mail, though.

Pelgrane PMay 20, 2014 5:22 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

We've updated the files again so you should have it on your library page now.

Jay DMay 02, 2014 5:45 pm UTC

PURCHASER

Where's the download for the subscriber-only Foul Congeries?

Pelgrane PMay 15, 2014 12:59 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

It's available from your download page. We sent out an email with a resubscription offer, but if you opted out of getting emails, you won't have had it.

Megan RSeptember 26, 2013 12:18 pm UTC

FEATURED REVIEWER

These subscriptions are a very useful idea - you don't miss a thing without needing to make an effort!

I had previously written to say that DTRPG has a long delay when it comes to publishing articles from KWAS, but that turns out not to be true: It just has a delay until you're allowed to purchase it. As a subscriber, I get it "early." It's [...]

These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.

For PDF download editions, each page has been run through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to attempt to decipher the printed text. The result of this OCR process is placed invisibly behind the picture of each scanned page, to allow for text searching. However, any text in a given book set on a graphical background or in handwritten fonts would most likely not be picked up by the OCR software, and is therefore not searchable. Also, a few larger books may be resampled to fit into the system, and may not have this searchable text background.

For printed books, we have performed high-resolution scans of an original hardcopy of the book. We essentially digitally re-master the book. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of these books is not as high. It's the problem of making a copy of a copy. The text is fine for reading, but illustration work starts to run dark, pixellating and/or losing shades of grey. Moiré patterns may develop in photos. We mark clearly which print titles come from scanned image books so that you can make an informed purchase decision about the quality of what you will receive.

Original electronic format

These ebooks were created from the original electronic layout files, and therefore are fully text searchable. Also, their file size tends to be smaller than scanned image books. Most newer books are in the original electronic format. Both download and print editions of such books should be high quality.